Their idyll was a smile of four lips... In the warm lap of blond spring They loved such that between their wise fingers the divine form of Chimera trembled.

In the glimmering palaces of quiet afternoons They spoke in a language heartfelt as weeping, And they kissed each other deeply, biting the soul! The hours fluttered away like petals of gold,

Then Fate interposed its two icy hands... Ah! the bodies yielded, but tangled souls Are the most intricate knot that never unfolds... In strife with its mad superhuman entanglements, Life’s Furies rent their coupled hands And wearied your powerful fingers, Ananké...

–Eros: have you never felt Piety for the statues? These chrysalides of stone, Some formidable race In an eternal, unutterable hope. The sleeping craters of their mouths Utter the black ash of silence; A copious shroud of Calm Falls from the columns of their arms, And night flows from their eyesockets; Victims of Destiny or Mystery, In magnificent and terrible cocoons, They wait for Life or Death. Eros: have you never perhaps felt Piety for the statues?

Piety for the lives That will not strew nor rend your battles Nor gild your fiery truces; Piety for the bodies clothed In the solemn ermine of Calm, The luminous foreheads that endure Their marble wreaths, grand and pure, Weighty and glacial as icebergs; Piety for the gloved hands of ice That cannot uproot The delicious fruits of the Flesh, The fantastic flowers of the soul; Piety for the eyes that flutter Their spiritual eyelids: Mysterious fish scales, Dark curtains on rose visions... For looking so far, they never see!

Piety for the tidy heads of hair –Mystical haloes– Gently combed like lakes Which the storm’s black fan, Black and enormous, never thrashes; Piety for the spirits, illustrious, Carved of diamonds, High, clear, ecstatic Lightning rods on pious domes; Piety for the lips like celestial settings Where the invisible pearls of the Host gleam; –Lips that never existed, Never seized anything, A fiery vampire With more thirst and hunger than an abyss. Piety for the sacrosanct sexes That armor themselves with sheaths From the astral vineyards of Chastity; Piety for the magnetized footsoles Who eternally drag Sandals burning with sores Through the eternal azure; Piety, piety, pity For all the lives defended By the lighthouse of Pride From your marvelous raw weathers:

Murmuring preludes. On this resplendent nightHer pearled voice quiets a fountain.The breezes hang their celestial fifesIn the foliage. The gray heads Of the owls keep watch. Flowers open themselves, as if surprised. Ivory swans extend their necks In the pallid lakes.Selene watches from the blue. FrondsTremble...and everything! Even the silence, quiets.

She wanders with her sad mouthAnd the grand mystery of amber eyes,Across the night, toward forgetfulnessLike a star, fugitive and white.Like a dethroned exotic queenWith comely gestures and rare utterings.

Her undereyes are violated horizonsAnd her irises–two stars of amber–Open wet and weary and sadLike ulcers of light that weep.

She is a grief which thrives and does not hope,She is a gray aurora risingFrom the shadowy bed of night,Exhausted, without splendor, without anxiousness.And her songs are like dolorous fairiesJeweled in teardrops...

The strings of lyresAre the souls' fibers.–

The blood of bitter vineyards, noble vineyards,In goblets of regal beauty, risesTo her marble hands, to lips carvedLike the blazon of a great lineage.

Strange Princes of Fantasy! They Have seen her languid head, once erect, And heard her laugh, for her eyesTremble with the flower of aristocracies!

And her soul clean as fire, like a star,Burns in those pupils of amber.But with a mere glance, scarcely an intimacy,Perhaps the echo of a profane voice,This white and pristine soul shrinksLike a luminous flower, folding herself up!